


The Last and the First

by miceenscene



Series: Shakarian - A Descent into Madness [10]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Afterlife, F/M, Fluffy Angst, Reunions, Visions, You Decide, angsty fluff, death cab for cutie playing vaguely in the distance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 19:39:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18534148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miceenscene/pseuds/miceenscene
Summary: "Were we happy?""We were, yes."Garrus finds himself on a beach that feels like home.





	The Last and the First

Garrus had heard of the ocean, but never seen it before now. Palaven didn’t really have oceans, just a few large lakes. And they certainly didn’t stretch out as far as his eyes could see till they met the dark starlit sky. The wind was fresh, bright and salty, to his nose. The ground was soft beneath his feet--sand, this was a beach. He’d heard about these too. Though where he was precisely and how he got here, he wasn’t sure at all.

Further away from the roaring shoreline, tucked back between the curves of a verdant sloping mountain, was a house. It wasn’t large or flashy, but it seemed homey. It had a large deck and the whole wall facing the sea was windows. He decided in that moment it was exactly the kind of house he’d like someday, if he lived that long.

He was so swept up in the view that it was almost a full minute before he realized he wasn’t alone on this beach. There was a small figure closer to the waves, sitting on the sand and leaning back against a lone slanted palm tree. He watched them for a while, but they didn’t move. Cautiously, he approached.

The wind blew their short hair back from their neck. Their shirt sleeves were pushed up to their elbows, one arm robotic. As he walked closer still, the curve of their shoulders started to seem almost familiar. It couldn’t be… but it was. As he came around in front of her, his mouth dropped open.

“Shepard?” he said, not quite believing his eyes. This… wasn’t Shepard, was it? Her red hair was entirely grey, streaked with white. Deep lines were drawn around her mouth and eyes. Her once powerful muscles were reduced, leaving her frame sinewy under the shirt.

“Garrus,” she sighed, a tired smile appearing in her eyes. Her voice was soft and creaked like an old wooden floor. She patted the sand next to her. “Have a seat.”

He sat down next to her, trying to figure out if she was actually Shepard. How could she be here? She was dead--no, wait. He-he saw her. On Omega. She was there somehow, she’d helped him almost defeat the gangs. And then there was the rocket--Spirits, maybe he was one who was dead.

“You look good,” she said, the smile spreading to her mouth now.

“You… too.”

She chuckled. “It’s not polite to lie, Garrus.”

He ducked his head in embarrassment, but he caught the touch of sadness in her eyes.

She turned back to look at the dark crashing waves. “You’d always respond, ‘You still look better than me, Shep’. But I guess you haven’t gotten that far yet.”

He frowned at her, trying to figure what she meant. “Shepard… am--am I dead?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you dead?”

“Not yet.”

“...Where are we?”

“Home.”

“You’re not normally this cryptic.”

“Don’t suppose you’ll let me blame it on old age, huh?” She smiled a little, as if at a private joke. “No, you wouldn’t.”

He huffed a breath, starting to feel a little frustrated at the half-answers and predictions of his behavior.

“Alright, alright,” she said, still sounding highly amused. “Don’t get your subvocals in a twist. What do you last remember?”

Okay, now they were getting somewhere. Perhaps he could get some real answers now. “Omega. You… helping me with the gangs.”

A corner of her mouth tucked up and she leaned her head back to rest on the trunk of the tree behind her. “The rocket.”

“Yeah. Everything went black and the next thing I knew, I was standing here.” He looked over. “And you’re… old.”

“Old’s better than dead, or so you kept saying.” She drew her knees up and rested her elbows on them. “Still don’t think I agree with you.” Her voice sounded bitter. “So what do you want to know?”

He paused and looked at her. “You’ll just tell me?”

“Given everything I know about you, which is at this point almost frightening, I think it’s safe to assume that you don’t remember this conversation.” She paused. “Or perhaps this is actually _my_ dream, not yours. Though if it was, I think I would have tried to remember someone more age appropriate.” She gave him a rueful smile, the lines around her eyes sharply contrasted in the moonlight.

“Alright…” He tried to pick a question of the several hundred that immediately presented themselves. “So you’re… not young and all this,” He gestured to the tropical paradise surrounding them. “Is still here… so we won? The Reapers, I mean.”

“Yeah. We did. By most accounts, we did… though not without cost. Mordin and Thane and Legion and--” She stopped and shook her head. “Joker was never the same after we lost her.”

Did Joker have… a wife in this strange future where the Reapers were just a distant memory?

“He once got very drunk and told me that we were square. He killed me and so I killed EDI. I doubt he remembered saying it as soon as it left his lips.” She sighed, as if physically burdened by the memory. Who knew how many more burdens she was carrying? More than a lifetime’s worth it seemed. “What else?”

He looked at her face for a long moment. Her eyes were still green and sharp enough to cut. The rest of her may have been almost unrecognizable, but her eyes were the same. “Did… did I survive the war?”

She nodded. “You survive a rocket to the face. You survive the invasion of Palaven. You survive the final blitz on London. You always said it would take something more than just the Reapers to take you down.” She grimaced.

Suddenly, her comment earlier made sense. “I’m--the Garrus you know is dead, isn’t he?”

She didn’t move for a moment, then nodded tersely.

“How?”

Her eyes slid over to him, her expression guarded. “You really want to know?”

A more cautious voice inside him told him ‘no’. “Yes.”

She didn’t answer right away, as if she was debating even honoring his request. “Corpalis... Same thing that took your mom.” She frowned deeply and studied his face. “You weren’t really you by the end.”

It was strange. He knew that she was telling the truth, but it felt so abstract that he almost had to convince himself to be horrified by it. If anything, the obvious pain on her face hurt more than the idea of how he would die.

“How many years ago was it?” he asked.

“Five days,” she replied, turning to look back out at the ocean. He felt her words like a blow between the ribs. “...And every night since I’ve seen you.”

He frowned and moved closer to her. “Shepard…”

“First night, I thought I was going crazy. It was like you’d just gotten out of bed, except you were you again. The next night, the last thing you remembered was this job we did on Illium almost fifty years ago. Every night you’ve remembered less and less, and you’ve come back younger and younger. At least last night, you remembered…” She trailed off and shook her head. “Never mind.”

“Remembered what?”

“Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.

A completely impossible thought popped into his head. “We… we were… together, weren’t we?”

Shepard looked over and gave him a fond smile. He looked down at her forearm and around her normal N7 tattoo were very familiar blue markings. His eyes snapped back up to hers. They weren’t just together; he was her mate. Commander Shepard was _his_ mate.

“How long?”

She took a deep breath. “One hundred and nine years.”

“Were we happy?”

She nodded. “We were, yes.”

He wanted to ask her a million questions. How did it all start, what did his father say, did they have kids? Why in the whole wide galaxy did she pick _him_? But something in her expression made him stay quiet. Even after one hundred and nine years, she was still very much the same Shepard. And he knew when she needed him to stay quiet.

Her eyes seemed to be almost searching the horizon for something. “I’m supposed to take a ship to Palaven tomorrow morning; place your memory stone with your family. But I...” She sighed. “You know me, I never know when to call it quits. Cutting my losses was never something I was very good at.”

They sat side by side in quiet for a minute. He felt absolutely helpless. The friend in him wanted desperately to help somehow, but he knew that he wasn’t the Garrus she wanted. He wouldn’t be the Garrus she wanted for another century. It seemed almost cruel, whatever trick of fate was doing this. Making her encounter her lost mate again and again but less and less with each time. As if she was losing him all over again.

“I miss you.” Her voice was barely loud enough to be heard over the waves. “I don’t… I don’t want to do this without you.”

“Do what?” he breathed.

She took a shuddering breath. “My life was good because you were in it. And I know I still have Liara and Grunt and Wrex and… but they’re not you. _I don’t want to do this without you_.” She gasped and he watched a tear roll down her cheek. More quickly followed.

“Shepard,” he keened, grappling around for something. _Anything_ . His commander--his best friend--his _mate_ was _crying_. He settled for grabbing her hand, holding it tightly between his.  She had problems he couldn’t begin to fix, burdens that would crush anyone less than her. What was he supposed to do? Why was he brought here?

Suddenly, Garrus understood as he looked further up the beach and saw a figure walking towards them. He wasn’t here to fix her problems, lighten her burdens. He was were to hold her hand and give her the first push. He looked back to Shepard, whose tears had quieted into a remorseful frown. Yes, this was what he was here for. He could do this for her.

He stood and pulled on her hand a little. “Come on,” he said, quietly when she looked up at him. He helped her to her feet, her legs unsteady beneath her, her shoulders stooped, her back curved. “Look.” He pointed to the figure still drawing nearer.

Shepard gasped. She knew that figure even better than he did. She stepped away from Garrus, her gait slow and unsure at first. He walked with her a few steps, till she dropped his hand and started walking faster. Faster and faster till she was sprinting towards the figure. Years of war, of death, of fear, of betrayal, of loss, dropping away from her frame with every step. Her hair flowed behind her bright and crimson again. And when she leapt into the arms of her Garrus, he caught her with practiced ease, spinning the two of them in a circle for a moment as they laughed.

Garrus looked back to the palm tree. Shepard was still sitting at its base, leaning back against the trunk with her eyes shut as if she’d just fallen asleep. Truly, she was finally awake. He tucked her hand back into her lap, oddly grateful that he’d been the one to be with her at the end.

“Thank you,” a voice in a familiar timbre said behind him. Garrus turned around to face himself, but it wasn’t really himself. There was a quiet assuredness about him, a set in the shoulders that spoke of a sense of self that Garrus had never mastered. Or rather… hadn’t mastered yet.

Garrus looked between the pair, how easily they fit together, and something inside him ached. “I don’t remember this, do I?” he asked her Garrus.

He shook his head. “Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

Garrus chuckled. “That’s what Shepard said.” Shepard smiled at him, young again and more unburdened than he’d ever seen her. _At rest_ , he thought.

“Dawn’s coming,” Shepard said, nodding to the brightening horizon.

“You have somewhere else to be,” her Garrus said to him, a smile in his voice. “And don’t worry about your face, women love scars.”

Almost as if in answer, the right side of his face throbbed a little. Oh right--a _rocket_.

“Mind you, most of those women are krogan,” Shepard added, smiling up at him. Garrus watched this version of himself look down at Shepard with more love than he’d ever thought of himself capable of. And the ache returned, but he could put a name to it now--longing. Missing something he didn’t even have yet. He could already tell, it would absolutely be worth the wait.

“Come on,” her Garrus said to Shepard. “There’s people waiting for us.”

“Who?”

He smiled. “Everyone.” He put his arm around her waist and they walked away, fading from view with every step.

Garrus blinked and when he opened his eyes again they were filled with the cold glare of fluorescent light. He grunted and shut them again. Oh, he was in _pain_.

“Garrus? Chakwas, he’s coming around.”

“Dammit, he needs to rest.”

He felt a five-fingered hand take his and give it a reassuring squeeze. “Relax, big guy. Chakwas has you in good hands. Just relax now.”

He--he wanted… something. There was something he wanted very badly. Something… with Shepard. He cracked open an eye and saw her standing over him, worry written in every line on her face, strange cuts on her cheeks.

“Your skin is smooth now,” he mumbled, the words not making much sense to even him.

“How many painkillers is he on?” Shepard asked someone standing on the other side of his bed.

“Not enough apparently. Garrus, I’m sedating you. You need to rest still.” There was a dull prick in his arm.

Shepard squeezed his hand as the world turned foggier. “See you on the other side…”

 

\---

“So is this warm and tropical enough for you?” Shepard asked as they walked hand in hand along the sandy beach.

When Garrus looked over at her, she was giving him a knowing smile. The tops of her cheeks were tinted red from the sun and she’d somehow acquired more freckles over her shoulders. Spirits, she just got more and more beautiful with every passing day.

“This is wonderful,” he replied, squeezing her hand.

“My thoughts exactly.” She stopped for a moment, standing in the shade beneath a lone slanted palm tree. They looked out at the rolling waves under a clear sunny sky. “It doesn’t get better than this, huh?”

As he admired the vista, something tickled the back of Garrus’ mind. He turned to look behind them, but there was nothing there. Just the side of the sloping lush mountain.

“What is it?” Shepard asked. She started scanning the treeline.

An idea occurred to him, almost as if he was stumbling over it rather than thinking of it. “We should build a house there,” he said, pointing to a spot between the curves.

“A house?”

He nodded, the idea feeling more right every every pass. “With lots of windows facing the ocean.”

She smiled. “And a big deck to watch the sunset?”

“Yeah.” He could practically see the roofline now. It already felt like home somehow.

Shepard sat down, leaning against the palm tree and folding her arms behind her head. “I’m game. We’ll need a place to store all of the turian-human babies anyway.”

He chuckled and sat down next to her, slipping his arm around her waist. “It’ll be perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know your thoughts below! Or find me on tumblr: miceenscene. <3, Kaitlyn


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